IE7 detected as IE6 on Vista…Why?

Question

I have two vista Business machines. I have IE 7 installed on both. On my first machine (Computer1) if I go to this site (http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html), it says I am using "Explorer 6 on Windows". If I use Computer2 with Vista Business and IE7, it says I am using "Explorer 7 on Windows". Here is a screen capture. The same version of IE is on both machines. Anyone have a solution?

Answer 1

Computer1: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; MS-RTC LM 8; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Rick Kierner (11 minutes ago)
Computer2: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.5.21022)  Rick Kierner (10 minutes ago)

There seems to be some garbage in the user agent of Computer1 that repeats the Mozilla/4.0 (compatible...) information with MSIE 6.0 information (and mismatched closing brackets). That said, I ran your user agent through the script provided on the page you linked to and it came back as Explorer 7, so I'm not sure why it is failing on the page itself.

Regardless, check your Registry for additional User Agent information that could be removed at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent] (yes, it resides under '5.0' even if you have Internet Explorer 7). Note that this is the location in Windows XP, I'm assuming it is the same in Windows Vista.

Answer 2

Can you post the User Agent of both machines? (you can go to some site that displays the user agent, i.e. this one, at the very bottom).

I assume it's a bug on the Quirksmode site in conjunction with the user gaent.

Answer 3

Are you using the same version of IE7 on both machines? If the versions are different then it is possible that the script is not recognising one version for some reason and is just defaulting to IE6 as a lowest common denominator. It is possible that one of the machines may have a version of IE which isn't exactly following the rules to the letter and the script is having a hard time handling it.

Answer 4

Check the registry keys [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform] and [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent\Post Platform]

Some pieces of software will add additional values here, which is fine, unless you specify a user agent string. In that case, most browser detects will fire off and detect the last value they find.

Typically, these values will either be in a "User Agent" key or "Post Platform" key.

Answer 5

I found the registry entry:

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-817507923-1393677948-3603797094-1205\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform

It had the

"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)"

value. After removing that, my browser is recognized as IE 7

Answer 6

This is just a guess, but the first string you posted explicitly has "MSIE 6.0" in the query string. If the site is lazy and doesn't properly parse the string, that could override the "MSIE 7.0" in the string earlier on, and give you a false result.

Answer 7

I found the IE6 registry key. Am I able to delete this without causing problems on my PC?? HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-117609710-1647877149-839522115-1003\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform where I found the following: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

I have IE7 installed and am able to use most facebook etc. items. It was pointed out to me that I seem to have both versions active and could experience problems if I don't fix this.

I don't want to remove the registry key if that could cause a whole new set of problems! thanks